Tempted by Darkness

by Lillian Sable

  Eventually, I managed to convince all of us, and they let me go.

  I told myself that the underworld and a literal god of death couldn’t possibly be real. I had never traveled there, barely escaping with my life and freedom. Instead, I was like Dorothy waking up after her adventures in Oz.

  All of it had been only a dream.

  Now, the underworld lived on only in my nightmares and in my art. And so did its master.

  Hades.

  Finally, after years, I accepted that he couldn’t be real.

  Then it took only a moment for everything I knew about the nature of reality to crack and shatter around me like shards of glass. I’d gotten complacent, crediting myself for the creation of an entire world as if one fragile, human girl could possibly possess such power.

  The doctors and nurses at the hospital worked so hard to convince me to accept reality. If only they’d known that they chose the wrong one to believe in.

  My roommate, Cleo, was already home when I burst into our shared apartment. I always felt like the darkness was chasing me when the sun set, and I refused to be outside when it disappeared over the horizon.

  Call it a phobia, but I knew terrible things happened in the liminal spaces, when one thing became another. Light to darkness was the most dangerous transition of them all.

  Cleo didn’t seem surprised at my huffing and puffing as I shut the door behind me and locked each of the four deadbolts one by one. My antics had been on display for all three of the years we’d been living together.

  She put up with me without complaint because tolerating me meant she didn’t have to pay rent.

  “Diana called,” Cleo said without looking away from the television. “I’m supposed to remind you to take your meds because you haven’t picked up a new prescription for this month yet.”

  Diana was my foster mother and the guardian that the court appointed when I was in and out of mental hospitals, which meant she was still in control of my finances even though I was old enough to access my trust fund. I’d considered petitioning the courts to have the guardianship formally rescinded, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Diana was the closest thing I had to a mother figure, and it felt like a betrayal to go around her when she tries so hard to take care of me. She made sure that my bills got paid on time when I would have otherwise forgotten, set up grocery deliveries because I would go hungry instead of leaving the apartment if I was in a mood, and managed my inheritance so the money would last for my entire life.

  I slung my bag onto the table next to the door. “What did you tell her?”

  “The truth. Your bottles are all almost empty, which is a good sign.” She casts me a sly glance, her gaze taking in the crooked neckline of my shirt from when I hastily pulled it back on in the costume room. “But for all I know, you’re taking pills out and flushing them down the toilet every day.” She picked up the remote and flicked the channel, smiling when some foul-mouthed cartoon came on the screen. “What else was I supposed to say?”

  “That, I guess.” The kitchen cabinet next to the fridge was full of enough bottles to stock a pharmacy. I sincerely doubted that Cleo took the time to go through them all. “I’m sure you’d tell her if you thought something was wrong.”

  She snorted without looking away from the screen.

  Cleo was a doe-eyed senior in the undergraduate theater program with a body out of a dirty magazine and a scary ability to read people. When we first met, I assumed she’d end up using her expensive education to give situationally believable hand-jobs on some porn set in the San Fernando Valley. But for as beautiful as she was, Cleo knew that all the magic happened behind the camera, and she was way too smart for anyone to take advantage of her.

  Diana let her live in the second bedroom of my fancy high-rise apartment rent-free in exchange for spying on me. But Cleo and I had a decent arrangement. As long as I didn’t give her any obvious reasons to sound the alarm with my guardian, then we could mostly stay out of each other’s hair. I didn’t exactly love that Diana picked someone younger than me to be my mother hen, but apparently no one my age was hard up enough for cash to take the offer.

  I knew Cleo thought I was weird as hell because she said something to that effect on a daily basis. There was always a gentleness to the observation, so I tried not to take it too personally.

  She giggled at a poop joke but then craned her head over the couch as I passed behind her. “Hey, the condo association sent some maintenance guys to look at the plumbing. I had to let them into that cave you call a room. If you don’t straighten it up, Diana is going to freak when she visits next week.”

  The visits were supposed to be a surprise, so Diana could make sure I wasn’t “decompensating” again, but Cleo always warned me when they were imminent. But I had no plans to change anything about my room. Diana could freak out if she wanted to, but I had everything set up the way I needed it to be.

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  But she didn’t turn back to the show. “A few of us are going to the Taphouse tonight for drinks. You should come.”

  I got the feeling that she was only offering the olive branch because she felt guilty about spying on me for Diana. It wasn’t like I blamed her for it. If Cleo had refused the job, Diana would have just found someone else to do it. But even though we got along okay in the apartment, Cleo and I ran with very different crowds.

  Hers was an actual crowd. Mine was me and sometimes Adonis, but mostly me.

  I forced myself to smile in a way that I hoped looked normal. “Maybe next time.”

  “You could bring Adonis.”

  So that was her angle. If Adonis stood out in the graduate program, to the younger students, he was a glorious god among mere mortals. “Have fun. Don’t stay out too late.”

  With a shrug, she turned back to the television as I hurried for the safety of my room and shut the door behind me.

  As I surveyed the space, I could only imagine what a stranger would think if they saw it. It wasn’t much different than when movies depicted the room of a disgraced cop hunting a serial killer.

  Drawings and paintings of dark and deathly landscapes covered every inch of the walls, some ripped out of sketchbooks and others done on actual canvas when I felt compelled to take the time. Imaginary creatures, many of them sinister, sculpted out of clay or paper mâché crowded each surface. Some of the work was good, and in another life, I might have made a career of it. I could be the H.R. Giger of twisted fantasy.

  But to have it all here like this looked more than a little crazy.

  Or like the space of a person with an overactive imagination and entirely too much time on their hands. I’d never seen Diana madder than when one of the dozens of psychiatrists I saw in the hospital first suggested that I translate the things I saw in my waking nightmares into art and then made the art therapy part of my treatment plan. She’d called him the worst sort of quack.

  She probably wasn’t wrong, looking at the results of his advice.

  When I didn’t create to get the persistent images out of my head and into some other medium, I read. Bookshelves dominated one wall, overstuffed with volumes of every type even though I felt drawn to the fantasy stories that I both loved and despised.

  They felt like reading someone else’s memories, both intimate and voyeuristic. As I grabbed a book off my shelf at random and collapsed onto the messy bed, Diana’s nagging voice echoed in my mind from the last actual conversation we had weeks ago.

  “I hope you’re not spending all your time daydreaming in your room or creating those . . . things. People will think you’re a snob, or worse. You’re in college, for heaven’s sake. This is the time when you should be living your life to the fullest. Meeting men! You’re so lovely, plenty of boys would fall all over you if you just put in a little bit of effort. I’d rather discover you’ve had a string of one-night-stands a mile long than spent every waking moment outside of class by yourself. I want to see you fall in love, even start
a family.”

  Diana was the old-fashioned type. I didn’t think she’d be happy taking a step back from me until she knew there was a husband with traditional values in the picture to keep me in line. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever be able to prove to her that I could take care of myself.

  I knew she meant well by encouraging me to date. But when I went out in the world, all I could think about was how little it seemed like I belonged there. That didn’t really make good conversation for a romantic dinner. And Diana acted like being single and without children at the ripe old age of twenty-four meant my biological clock was moments from running out.

  Ignoring the specter of my lovably nagging guardian, I opened the book and relaxed back against the pillows. With a little frisson of pleasure, I realized that I grabbed one of my favorites.

  Lament of the Underworld was probably the work that most influenced my fevered imagination. I found it among my parents’ things when I was a kid, and I treated my copy like gold because, as far as I could tell, it had gone out of print years ago. I’d never run into another copy, no matter how much time I spent in used bookstores.

  There was a point in my life when I’d been convinced it was real, before a legion of specialists and a truckload of medication tethered me back to the real world. Diana had tried to take it away from me once, and my reaction had been the only moment of violence I’d ever exhibited in my life. I’d tried to claw her face and screamed like a banshee until she gave it back.

  I’d been six at the time.

  In the story, Hades stole young girls away because he had grown lonely as the only living thing in a land of the dead. It was published in like the 1800s, so the writing was spare, but the sexual innuendo of it always grabbed me.

  The girls had to go willingly, or he couldn’t take them in the first place. And he seduced them slowly once they were trapped inside his castle, wooing them with wine and treasures until they succumbed.

  And submitted.

  My play maintained a faithful adaptation of Hades from this story, but I took plenty of liberties to make things more interesting. In my version, the girl went through a hero’s journey to gain the strength to resist Hades, even as she fell deeper in love with him.

  In the end, she had to decide between wasting away into death as his prize or escaping back to the real world and watching the realm she had come to love descend into darkness and cease to exist.

  As I turned the page, Diana’s voice nagged at me.

  “These are books for children, not a grown woman. When are you going to grow up and focus on what’s real?”

  Diana wasn’t a fan of my decision to pursue a program in the arts. She was okay with the college thing because it served as a distraction from something worse, but I was sure she hoped I’d focus on an M.R.S. and drop out eventually to have babies.

  She seemed to think that all it would take to make me normal again was good dick.

  Before I could sink further into the realm of imagination, loud banging rattled the door. Without waiting for an acknowledgment, Cleo burst into the room.

  “It looks like the guy from Memento went on an acid trip in here,” she declared, eyeing with disdain a poster-size painting on the wall of a raven with dozens of eyes. “Diana just called and asked me what your plans are for tonight.”

  I sat the well-worn book down on the nightstand, careful not to tear any of the fragile pages. “What did you tell her?”

  Cleo smirked. “That you’re wallowing in your room and doing your best impression of a total social reject, like always.”

  That nearly made me choke on my own spit. Diana would ride in here like a Valkyrie. “Seriously?”

  “Of course not. What do you take me for?” She tossed a fall of golden-blonde hair over her shoulder. “I told her you were coming out for drinks at the Taphouse.”

  My eyes rolled so hard they nearly fell out of my head. “You couldn’t tell her that I’m studying?”

  “We’re theater majors, what is there to study?” she asked with a laugh. Holding out her hand, she inspected her set of perfectly manicured coffin nails painted an electrifying pink. “And now you have to come because you know Diana is going to track the location of your phone.”

  “Or you could take my phone with you to the bar because it’s not like anybody calls me anyway.”

  Cleo’s hands slid down the skintight bodycon dress she must have poured herself into while I was reading. “I totally would, but unfortunately, this dress doesn’t have any pockets.”

  “Of course it doesn’t. And who carries a purse these days?”

  Obviously treating the question as rhetorical, she raised her own phone and waggled it at me. “Oh, I almost forgot. I texted Adonis to see if he’s free. He’s already in a cab headed downtown, so if you don’t come, then I guess I’ll have him all to myself.”

  My legs were already swinging over the side of the bed. “I hate you.”

  She clapped her hands together before spinning back to the main room, heels clacking on the hardwood. “Be ready in ten, babes.”

  It was impossible to tell if Cleo was actually interested in Adonis, or just using whatever means to manipulate me that were at her disposal. Access to a luxury apartment and the money Diana pays her on top of it were all predicated on her ability to keep me from becoming a total hermit, per Diana’s exacting instructions.

  This situation was orchestrated with the skill of a mastermind. If I went out with her for drinks, then it kept Diana happy without Cleo needing to work too hard. And if I said no, she got to monopolize Adonis’s attention for the entire night. Either way, she won.

  I told myself that Adonis wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole, but that was just to make myself feel better. Not only was Cleo gorgeous, but she had absolutely no shame in capitalizing on it. She could have almost any guy at this school eating out of the palm of her hand if she wanted.

  Briefly, I considered putting on the track pants that I wore to bed the night before, just to get under Cleo’s skin. But the last thing I needed was for someone to snap a photo that could get back to Diana. If she saw me out in public looking like a hobo, I’d end up committed again.

  I kicked off my clothes and chose a simple shift dress from the closet. I was pretty sure Diana had picked it out because the dress had that virginal look she liked while still hugging every curve.

  My hand rubbed up my calf to check for stubble, but my legs felt smooth enough even though it had been over a week since I last shaved. My body hair grew so slowly that most people didn’t notice how little effort I put into personal grooming.

  When I turned toward the door, I caught a reflection of my face in the mirror. My dark hair was wild and full of untamed curls that cascaded over my shoulders. It always managed to look like I just stepped out of a wind tunnel.

  As dark as my hair was, it made a stark contrast with the paleness of my skin and nearly colorless gray of my eyes. I looked a little bit like Snow White if that apple had killed her instead of just putting her to sleep.

  Sometimes, I imagined that I didn’t look like anything at all. Like I was a wraith drifting through the world without anything as physical as a body tethering me to the earth.

  Diana would say that I need blush and some decent mascara.

  For a moment, a different reflection flashed across the mirror. Another girl who wore my face but I knew couldn’t be me. Her hair cascaded down her shoulders in perfect curls as the lace dress floated around her body. Our gazes met, and a stab of premonition shot through me.

  When I blinked, the vision was gone.

  I grabbed the bottle off the nightstand and swallowed my evening dose dry with the ease of long practice. The voices I used to hear had been gone for years, but every so often, I would see something that could only be called a hallucination. Medication kept the worst of it at bay, but not entirely.

  Cleo cast a long-suffering look over me as I marched into the living room, but kept her mouth shut. At least
I was wearing a dress, even if it was more Sunday school than clubwear. She’d learned her lesson about commenting on my wardrobe.

  At the first snarky comment, I would go back into my room and change into something even worse, like pull dirty clothes out of the hamper or throw on a paint-splattered art smock. She had to be seen with me, so if she played with fire, we were both getting burned.

  I couldn’t care less what I looked like most of the time, so making Cleo suffer was the icing on the shit cake of being forced to go out in the first place.

  I wasn’t even sure if she spoke with Diana. But Cleo knew I wouldn’t call her bluff, because that would mean getting in touch with my guardian myself, opening up a can of worms that I rarely had the energy to deal with.

  Diana cared, but she treated nagging like it was her job. And business was good.

  “Ready?” Cleo asked as she rose and tottered on her too-high heels to the door.

  A shiver of foreboding worked its way down my spine, even though I had no idea why.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Chapter Three

  Adonis was already at the Taphouse when we arrived, sitting with a handful of other people from our theater program. He laughed at something one of them said, and it lit up his face like a beacon of light in the darkness. I’d never met anyone so genuinely carefree in my entire life.

  His smile only widened when he turned to see us approach. He scooted further into the booth and patted the seat next to him when I got to the table. “Take a load off, Seph. I didn’t think you’d make it.”

  Before I could sit, Cleo slid into the space, forcing me to pull up a chair from a nearby table.

  “Everyone is ready to get wasted, right?” she asked, giving Adonis a huge smile.

  There was a chorus of cheers, although I noticed Adonis only responded with a small smile and didn’t say anything else. I planned to bow out before anyone ended up under the table, but the rest of them were welcome to spend the night killing off brain cells.